My spot in the Full Control office along with my Lego Bub watching me write.

I want to tell you a bit about what’s happening with the Jagged Alliance Flashback production at the moment even though it’s still in preproduction. I’m going to try to answer some of the questions asked by JA fans.

Have you guys started working on JAF?

Some Jagged Alliance fans are worried that we haven’t started working on JAF yet. Let me assure you that I’ve been working hard on the JAF story for the last 5 weeks. Filip Pilebo, the level designer, and I are working closely together on creating the game world, story and map at the moment. Right now Filip is sitting behind me drawing yet another version of the map and fitting in the latest ideas.

Are the programmers and artists busy yet?

It wouldn’t make sense to get programmers and artists working on JAF right now We’re changing plot details and map design every second day at the moment. There’s simply nothing for a programmer or artist to do yet.

What’s been happening on the Jagged Alliance production until now?

I’m going through this to give you a sense of what’s been done on the Jagged Alliance Flashback production in the past five weeks and to assure you that we’re not just beering it up in hammocks in here.

I began by writing five completely different story scenarios based on what we’ve promised in the Kickstarter. It was five stories spanning from realistic to pretty ridiculous. We then discussed the stories with the team and chose one of the them. I spiced it up with the teams favorite plot devices from the other scenarios. Then I began filling the story with details about locations, characters (We have no names yet, sorry.) and optimizing the dramatic structure of the story to make sure that you guys will have a kickass time playing this as the plot tenses up.

When Filip came on-board I took him through the story and he got started on drawing a map. We began with a very analogue approach, moving post-it notes on a map, but now we finally feel it’s time to go digital. Filip is still moving set pieces around on the crude digital map and we’re still making changes.

WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG?

I think we’ve done a lot of work on fleshing out the JAF game world and story. I understand that some of you are eager to see progress and how your backer money (Thanks!) is used. But we’re not going to rush this. This is an important foundation of the game. If we screw up the story and map design by taking a lot of quick and easy decisions, or not thinking it through, we’ll screw up a vital part of the game that everything else will be built on. Then we’ll have to correct those mistakes later in the process, and changing story and map design at a late state will damage the game play.

What’s happening in the near future?

I’ll still be working on fitting the plot with the game/level design. I’ve also started looking into what existing mercs from the first two games to put in the story and where you’ll meet them on the map. We’re trying hard to put some of your favorite mercs in there, but as you know everyone’s got their own favorites so we simply can’t satisfy everyone. I’ll also try to get the last pieces of story to fit and start looking at what we need to setup in the intro and outro to perfectly bracket the game.

Can you tell us anything about the story?

It’s very early and I’m still working to get all the pieces to fit. For two reasons I’m still a bit afraid of revealing plot points. First of all we’re changing stuff around all the time. We don’t want to go public with something that isn’t locked down yet. The second reason is that we’re not going to spoil the game for you. You want to be surprised when you play it, right? I’m not saying that the story will be completely under wraps the entire production; we’ll give you something on the way, don’t worry.

Contribute to the Jagged Alliance playlist on Spotify

I’ve created a “Jagged Alliance Flashback” playlist on Spotify. Here it is: Jagged Alliance Flashback Spotify playlist (You have to have Spotify installed). Just follow the playlist and you’ll be able to add tracks to it. You don’t have to follow me as a user. If there’s any music that just screams Jagged Alliance to you feel free to add it to the list. All Jagged Alliance fans can listen in on your suggestions and we’ll definitely be listening to the tracks in here while working on JAF as well.